Water District Implements Ignition System To Deliver Increased Visibility, Redundant Communication, And Secure Remote Access

Project Overview

The Wheeler Ridge-Maricopa Water Storage District (WRMWSD) replaced its failing 2000s-era SCADA system with an Ignition 8.1 platform running on Opto 22 groov EPIC controllers and a Canary Historian, delivering sub-second visibility, triple-path redundant communications, and secure remote access. This upgrade eliminated daily communication outages, cut energy use by 8%, and gave operators full real-time insight and predictive-maintenance capability across 34 pumping plants. 

Challenges

WRMWSD supplies irrigation water across 230 square miles through 34 pumping plants. Its 2000s-era SCADA system generated daily communication failures, multi-minute data latency, and opaque PLC logic. Operators often learned of pump outages only after reservoir levels fell, then drove to remote sites to reboot equipment. These manual resets, higher energy bills, and limited diagnostic visibility jeopardized peak-season deliveries.

Implementing a new system presented several challenges, including:

1. Inconsistent field connectivity – Unreliable 900 MHz radios halted automatic pump sequencing whenever packets were lost. 

2. Cybersecurity – Critical-infrastructure rules demanded remote access without exposing OT assets to the public Internet. 

3. Panel congestion – Two decades of ad hoc wiring filled MCC cabinets, raising the risk of mis-landing signals during cutover. 

4. Legacy PLC extraction – Existing code was read-only; re-engineering had to proceed without downtime. 

5. Operator adoption – Dispatchers required a new interface that retained familiar workflows while adding real-time diagnostics.

Solution

With Ignition at the core, WRMWSD chose Avadine to replace its previous SCADA system with Ignition, Opto 22 groov EPIC, and the Canary Historian.

Avadine made use of various Ignition features during this implementation:

• Tag Historian (Canary) – High-resolution tags stream to Canary every second, enabling instant trend overlays and long-term analytics. 
• Perspective – Responsive UIs for tablets and desktops sharing a common project. 
• Gateway Scripting – Sub-second failover among LTE, LoRaWAN, and fiber links; heartbeat timers highlight latency spikes
• Security Zones & RBAC – Least-privilege access with full audit trail. 
• Edge Sync & EAM – Remote gateways sync changes through a DMZ without exposing PLC networks.

The system includes several key architectural features:

• Redundant communication paths – Cambium Point-to-Point radios, LTE radios at every pump station, and MQTT on-prem and the cloud. 
• Network segmentation – OT VLANs, DMZ jump hosts, and TLS-encrypted MQTT bridging OT to IT via a DMZ. 
• Template library – UDTs for pumps, valves, and VFDs cut station rollout time to minutes.
• Canary Historian integration – Tag data is buffered locally and forwarded to a clustered Canary node; operators drag and drop tags onto ad hoc plots without leaving the HMI. 
• Phased cutover – Old and new HMIs polled side by side; each plant switched only after tag-level verification. 

Result

This project has been an enormous success, already providing tangible improvements in less than a year:

• Zero unplanned comm-fail events in the first nine months; daily truck rolls eliminated.
• Sub-second visibility into tank levels, run states, and VFD currents; dispatchers react immediately instead of waiting minutes. 
• 8% energy reduction from demand-based pump cycling. 
• Data-driven insight – Canary’s storage maintains one-second resolution for five years; operators overlay flow, pressure, and power curves. 
• Regulatory compliance – Segmented networks, certificate-based VPN access, and audited operator actions satisfy California Division of Safety of Dams guidelines. 

Beyond the initial deployment, the project emphasizes long-term self-reliance: Avadine runs weekly hands-on sessions in which WRMWSD operators trace faults from the Ignition HMI, through the groov EPIC Project Overview controller, down to individual I/O points, steadily building in-house troubleshooting expertise. Real-time flow balancing and automated pump scheduling have already cut energy consumption by roughly 8% and prevented over-pumping events, advancing the WRMWSD’s conservation goals without new infrastructure. 

To benefit the wider community, the Ignition UDT and template library that Avadine created for this project has been published on the Ignition Exchange, enabling other water districts to accelerate similar modernizations. The 3D enclosure models and high-resolution Canary Historian data now feed a pilot machine-learning pipeline that predicts pump-bearing wear and will expand to leak detection next season. Finally, the phased-cutover playbook and standardized Opto 22 panel layout form a documented reference design that the WRMWSD is using to modernize an additional 18 sites with minimal engineering effort. 

Project Team

This project was delivered by a multidisciplinary team whose expertise spanned software, networking, fabrication, field work, and logistics. Ignition developers Pat Smith and Kyle Muldoon built the Perspective interfaces, scripted MQTT failover routines, integrated Canary Historian tags, and translated the legacy ladder logic into a structured-text library of reusable UDTs. Nicolas Ray, the network architect, designed the OT/IT segmentation strategy, configured VPN tunnels and DMZ jump hosts, and implemented the firewall rules and role-based access policies that underpin the system’s cybersecurity posture.

On the hardware side, Aziz Safarov fabricated the Opto 22 groov EPIC panels, replaced congested MCC wiring, and executed the phased cutovers in the field. He was supported by lead technician Joseph Mello, who coordinated on-site installations, supervised I/O verification, and oversaw startup testing at each pumping plant, along with technicians Oscar Sandoval and Richard Rice, who handled mounting, loop checks, and walk-downs to remove redundant wiring and confirm labels against P&IDs. Micah Ray provided 3D enclosure models, wiring diagrams, and training visuals that streamlined fabrication and clarified documentation for operators. Finally, logistics coordinator Aaron Hight managed hardware procurement, scheduled deliveries, and secured site access, ensuring materials and crews were onsite exactly when needed.

Start Date: June 2023

Deploy Date: April 2025